[GodBeastX]

Really, themes seem to matter more to play player-base than mechanics. People react well to humorous topics and poor to overly serious ones.

Giant bat bites a char with a crit to the neck and they pass out with horrible rolls. They vow to hunt every bat and make tons of bat related comments, which has everyone laughing. Happy campaign.

Dungeon crawling with hack & slash, traps, etc, fun but less entertaining.

So I spend more time working up encounter humor and uniqueness in the personality of the things given.


Some things I learned over the last couple years and might be specific to my group:

* Short and to the point dungeons are widely preferred (They like to change environments alot).
* Lots of personality and feeling in whatever is being done so people can feel more immersed.
* Any challenging encounter needs to risk the character's life, but without really shutting down any of their abilities. (They like the thrill of plotting and scheming how to deal with things).
* No railroads on plots/schemes/stories/etc at all. If they manage to deal with a villain without a fight, they'll do it!
* Interesting new creatures to encounter instead of tried and true Tolkien/D&D-esque stuff.
* Morally gray situations left and right (My players like their char's conscious to be pricked about hacking something in front of them to bits).
* Strangely, my players don't like loot as much. They like the feel that their char is the power, and not the gear they're carrying around. So expect people to be in the same cruddy leather they started in XD Though consumables tend to be okay.
* Oh, and my players don't like resource tracking.